


Brothers and Birds of Prey

by everythingneedsrevision



Category: DCU, Hardy Boys - Franklin W. Dixon, Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Alternate Universe, Case Fic, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingneedsrevision/pseuds/everythingneedsrevision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank and Joe Hardy have been recruited to look into a mass mob murder in Blüdhaven. Pursuing two lines of inquiry, the guys go undercover in the corrupt police force and the mob, attracting the attention of both Nightwing and Officer Dick Grayson. Meanwhile, Nancy's been given an offer from Oracle that has her in Gotham, considering and being considered for a place on Barbara's Birds of Prey team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cases and Strange Offers

**Author's Note:**

> So this is in part max2013's fault. There were two reviews with "holy Batman" in them, and that got me thinking of crossover possibilities. Then I had a really lousy night/day. I couldn't write anything on my existing stories, and I had been watching the Animated Series since I needed a break before marathoning the 70s and 90s Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys shows again. So I decided to indulge myself some with this "test" to see if I could make the idea viable.
> 
> I'm still on the fence about it, and I will go back to All the Broken Pieces now, but I needed something different today. It has been a while since I read the comics, but I took Barbara needing to replace her Birds of Prey team and mixed it with the case that originally drew Dick to Blüdhaven. It's only mildly canon-compliant.
> 
> Also... Should warn that I am not only a Frank/Nancy shipper but also a Dick/Babs shipper, and if even hints of that bother people... turn away now because I can't seem to stop writing them in. Not very good at overt, either, but I didn't last a chapter without some friendship fluff/banter sneaking in.

* * *

“I don't like this,” Joe admitted, leaning back in his seat. Normally, he liked traveling first class, but right now, he was too on edge to enjoy it. They were being dragged back across the country, but instead of going home as had been the plan, they were about to get dumped into another mission. They were just lucky that neither of them had gotten hurt on their last case. “Dealing with corrupt cops is almost more dangerous than with criminals themselves. At least with them you know you're dealing with the bad guys. With corrupt cops, how can you ever be sure?”

Frank closed the file. Joe didn't know why it was still open—it wasn't that thick and Frank had already read it over more than once, but that was what his brother did—he prepared. “At least we know going in that more than half of the force is corrupt. It would be worse if we didn't.”

“I guess. I'm not sure why they're sending us in there, though,” Joe said, voicing something that had been bothering him since the beginning of their briefing. “I know it's not that far from home, practically right in our backyard, but Blüdhaven is like Gotham. Off-limits because of vigilante activity.”

Frank looked over at his brother, smiling but saying nothing, holding it long enough to make Joe crazy. After a few minutes, Joe reached over and hit him in the arm. Frank didn't even bother to make a show of rubbing at his arm, but he didn't stop smirking.

“What is so damn funny?”

“You.” Frank laughed. Joe hit him again. “All right. All right. When you think about it, we're not that different from vigilantes. True, we don't do our investigating in flashy costumes or have codenames, no elaborate personas or anything, but we're not law enforcement. Not officially. Even if we were licensed with Dad's agency, even when we're working for the Network, it's all unofficial and we do break laws to get what we need to solve our cases. Breaking and entering, trespassing, hacking... we do all of that.”

Joe laughed. “You know, you're right—we do. I wonder what I'd be if I was a superhero. Something cool—maybe like the Flash?”

“If the Flash has a big mouth and an overexaggerated reputation with the ladies, sure,” Frank said, dodging another swipe from Joe's fist. “You should probably try and sleep. We will be going right back to work as soon as we land.”

“I liked your logic when you were likening us to superheroes—”

“Technically I linked us to vigilantes—”

“But not when you're getting all responsible on me. Come on, Frank. Enjoy yourself a little. We didn't even celebrate solving that last case.”

Frank grimaced. He shook his head as he shifted in the chair. “With the way that went down, I don't think celebrating is the right word. We should be so fortunate that the Network has an interest in Blüdhaven because I don't think anyone would want to hire us after that last fiasco.”

Joe sighed. “I suppose you have a point.”

His brother turned back to the file, looking it over with a frown.

“Haven't you read that enough by now? You should have it memorized by now.”

“Did you miss the body count on page one?” Frank asked, shaking his head. “Sixty. An entire mob family wiped out and dumped in the river. I'd really like to avoid becoming one of them. I really want you to avoid being one of them.”

“You're not going to start on me having the more dangerous role again, are you? Because I'm telling you, Frank, even if you're just going in as an IT geek, it's you. You're the one going in with a bunch of dirty cops. Me? I know I'm going in with the mob, and I know who I can trust. You don't.”

Frank snorted. “You're not going to convince me that being undercover in the mob will ever be safer than playing a cop, little brother. We never should have agreed to this.”

That, Joe thought, he could actually agree with.

* * *

_Admit it, Drew, this is completely crazy,_ Nancy told herself as she settled in the back of a Gotham city cab. She should never have come. Anyone would tell her she was nuts for doing it. All she'd gotten was a bouquet of flowers and a cryptic invitation, and she should have dismissed it or assumed it was a trap. She wasn't thinking that it _wasn't,_ but she had to admit that she could have found a better way to spring it besides walking right into it.

Still, something about it compelled her. She had to know more, and she was going to find out just what this Oracle person wanted with her.

She just wished she'd been able to get a hold of Frank or Joe before she'd left River Heights. Not only was Gotham closer to their hometown, making it more likely that they would have heard rumors from there in the first place, but they also had local connections—and the ultra-secret Network as a resource.

She should have had plenty of information on Oracle by now, but since she hadn't heard from the Hardys or any of her other contacts, she had nothing but a failed internet search to go on. She was, effectively, going in blind.

She'd left word with her family and friends just in case, though she was hoping that particular backup plan wouldn't be necessary. Oracle claimed to have an interesting employment opportunity for her, and Nancy was curious. It was far from the first job offer she'd ever had—the FBI, CIA, and a few other agencies had offered her work. She was still trying to decide between the offers while she worked on her degrees.

The cab stopped in front of the hotel. “This is it, lady.”

Nancy nodded. She took out her wallet and handed him enough bills to cover the trip. She would get more information once she checked into the hotel, she was sure of it, so arriving here was a relief. As soon as she knew what this Oracle was up to, she'd feel a lot better about the whole thing.

She grabbed her bag and left the car, climbing up the steps. The doorman let her in, and she crossed the lobby to the front desk.

“I have a reservation under Drew,” Nancy told the clerk. He gave her a tight nod as he looked it up on the computer. She was almost convinced it would have been lost, but he stopped, touching the screen.

“One single, two nights. You're in room five-ten,” he told her, activating a set of door keys and handing them to her.

“Don't you want identification or a credit card?”

The clerk shook his head. “Room's been paid for. Enjoy your stay.”

She wasn't sure that would happen, but she accepted her key and made her way toward her room. If this was a test set up by Oracle, Nancy was almost guaranteed to have failed it by now. She took out her phone and hit the button to put another call into the Hardys. Maybe Joe was busy flirting or in some kind of trouble.

She had to settle for Frank's voicemail. Again. “Frank, it's Nancy. I'm... in the area, kind of. I was hoping to talk to you. Or Joe. Call me back when you get this. Please. I'm starting to get worried about both of you.”

She ended the call as the elevator reached the fifth floor. She stepped out and waited.

“All right, Oracle. I'm here.”

* * *

Selina would have words for this one—curiosity killed the cat.

Barbara shook her head, fighting amusement even as she kept watch on the video screens. She didn't know what to think of this one yet. She'd had far too many of her invitees ignore the card, and many of them weren't ones she'd really wanted to recruit in the first place. Black Canary leaving the team, followed by Huntress and Lady Blackhawk had made Barbara's situation a little desperate.

Nancy Drew had a reputation. She was known for her investigative work, having solved cases all around the world. While she had worked with several different law enforcement agencies in the past, she didn't belong to any of them. She was still freelance, leaving her in a position where she could take up Barbara's offer if she chose.

Not that Barbara had really made one—yet. That was why Miss Drew was a little too curious for her own good. She'd come without knowing who had sent her the card or why, and though Barbara had seen her attempt to make contact with people who might have been able to tell her more about Oracle, she hadn't managed it, and Barbara kept the internet free of any trace of herself, leaving nothing more for Drew to find, since their paths had never come close to crossing before.

The question was... Was Drew's willingness to come all this way and look into that offer an asset or a sign of recklessness?

That Barbara couldn't answer, not without further observation. She needed to know how Drew would handle taking orders from someone she never saw—how she took orders, _period_ —and how the other woman worked under pressure.

“Hmm. She's cute, but then I always did have a thing for redheads.”

Barbara snorted, rolling her eyes as she turned around. “What are you doing here, Dick?”

“Testing your security,” he told her with a grin. Barbara shook her head, wishing it was easier to resist that smile. The Grayson charm worked on everyone from morose superheroes to hardened criminals. “Actually... I heard about Canary and the others. I was—”

“Worried?”

“—going to offer my services, should you need them,” he finished. “I know I'm not your usual choice for legwork, but if you were to need anything—”

“Isn't Nightwing a little busy in Blüdhaven these days?” Barbara asked, folding her arms over her chest. “And Dick Grayson has his hands full being a rookie cop. You're already spread pretty thin.”

“My offer stands,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “I'm your friend, Babs. Don't forget that.”

“I haven't.” She covered his hand with hers. “I appreciate the offer, but I know you have other things you need to do. I'll let you know if I run into anything I can't handle—just don't forget that I can and do take care of myself.”

“I'd never do that,” he assured her. He gave her another smile before turning toward the window. “Let me know how it goes with the new recruits. I can help vet them if you want.”

“I'll manage. You're on shift in less than an hour, Officer Grayson. You'd better head down to Blüdhaven—you know how bad rush hour traffic can be.”

He gave her a salute before jumping out the window. She bumped the armrest of her wheelchair and tried to pretend she didn't care that he could still do that and she couldn't.

* * *

Frank winced when he took a sip of stale coffee, not able to remember how long it had been since he left to go get it. The stuff was disgusting in the first place—the sort of coffee that horror stories were made of—but when he forgot about it, he made it ten times worse, at least.

He fiddled with his lanyard. He still hadn't heard anything from Joe, and while he knew they couldn't make direct contact without raising anyone's suspicions, they'd put measures in place for that. Joe not using them worried him. It wouldn't be that hard to believe that his brother was already in trouble. Joe was a magnet for that sort of thing.

“Knock knock.”

Frank leaned back in his chair, trying not to reveal his surprise. This cop was only a patrolman, so why was he down here in the IT division? “Need something, Officer?”

“You're new.”

“That a crime?” Frank asked, hoping his tone seemed light enough to make it a joke. Last thing he needed was to blow his cover this early—he'd only been on the job for a couple days.

“No, but I'm used to the other one—grumpy, fat, hates anything that doesn't operate on binary code? You know what happened to him?”

Frank shook his head. He figured the Network had arranged something to take him out of the picture, though it could have been the work of someone else as well. “They didn't say. I didn't ask.” 

The other man nodded, though he didn't seem too pleased by that answer. Or maybe he had wanted the antisocial tech to be there. He smiled, holding out a hand to Frank. “I'm Dick Grayson.”

Frank frowned. This guy was billionaire Bruce Wayne's ward? What was he doing as a beat cop in one of the most corrupt cities in the country? That made no sense. Frank decided to look into later, not wanting to alert the guy just yet. He offered up the cover identity the Network had given him. “Daniel Weston. Did you need something?”

“Yeah. Had a guy we picked up earlier drop this,” the officer said, holding up a flash drive. “They told me to see if there was anything on it.”

Frank eyed it. Something about this whole thing felt off, and he wasn't sure if it was just that the rich kid was slumming or not. He didn't know what to think of this Officer Grayson, but he knew something was wrong. He made no move to touch the drive. “If this is some kind of rookie hazing and I find a bunch of videos of Justin Beiber on this thing—”

“I'm a rookie, too. Why would I haze you?” Grayson asked. He shook his head. “If you'd rather not look at it, that's fine. I could do it myself or I've got a friend who does tech work—”

“Give it to me, and I'll get it looked at. It is my job, after all.”

Grayson nodded. “You're right. I'm just used to the last guy. He didn't think so.” 

“Yes, well, I get the feeling he didn't like you.”

Grayson frowned. “What's not to like?”

“You sound like my brother,” Frank muttered, holding out his hand for the drive. “Come back in half-an-hour. I'll have something for you then.”

“Half-an-hour?”

“Something wrong with that?”

“No,” Grayson said in a tone that wasn't very convincing. “Not at all.”


	2. Cross-Purposes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy considers Oracle's offer further. Joe finds himself in the middle of a mob war. He's not alone, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the pulling of teeth that this was to write. I swear I was all sorts of happy to do more, but when it came time to sit down and write it, I couldn't get myself to do it. I could blame the whole thing on a sudden shift one of my other stories wants to do to me or some residual guilt at not updating the fluffier ones (I can't do light-hearted things when I'm depressed or angry, it just doesn't work) or I could just admit that crossovers are hard and this scares me a lot to do.
> 
> Admittedly, it would have been easier if Nancy had just been a bird of prey and not considering it, but that seemed like such a perfect way to start. At least at first. And then there was the action. I actually went back and added more to Joe's scene. That was... difficult.

* * *

Nancy read over the file again and frowned.

Not long after she'd gotten to her room, it had been delivered to her, and while she'd expected an actual offer this time, she'd been given the details about a case instead—with a number to call if she was interested in pursuing it.

It all _seemed_ like something she should be interested in, something that should be investigated and stopped, but that was the trouble. Here she was, in a dangerous city, with some unknown person offering her a case that seemed almost custom tailored to get her attention, and she didn't like it. She couldn't help thinking about some of the ones she'd worked in the past—on her own or with the Hardys—where they'd been lured in by the circumstances and tricked into helping the people they thought they were there to stop.

She turned the card over in her hands before setting it down.

“Sorry, Oracle, but without knowing who you are or what you're actually after, I can't do this,” she said. She didn't expect anyone to hear her, and there was a part of her still tempted to take the case and see if that led her any closer to the mysterious Oracle, but she didn't know that she could justify that. She had offers from legitimate agencies, and if she wanted to pursue ones of a more clandestine nature, she could have gone for the one she knew that Frank and Joe had worked for in the past, one that supposedly no one knew existed.

No, it was easy enough to say no.

She turned away and started gathering her things. She wouldn't completely waste the trip if she went down to Bayport. Maybe then she could find out what was going on with Frank and Joe. Neither of them had answered her calls or texts, and with even the ones at the house not being returned, she was starting to worry. The whole family could be gone, maybe on vacation or Fenton on a case of his own, but that still didn't explain why no one was responding. She could possibly find out more if she went down there, since she didn't have anyone else to contact. While Frank and Joe had become good friends with her own friends Bess and George, Nancy had never managed to get close to anyone from Frank and Joe's side. She heard them mention names a lot—Chet, Biff, Tony, Phil, Callie, Vanessa—but she didn't have contact information for any of them.

That was something she was going to fix. If all she did when she went to Bayport was meet some of the Hardys' friends, she'd consider that worth it, too. She picked up her bag and started for the door. She was done here, as much as she was still curious about the offer and the case.

Her phone rang as she pushed the button for the elevator, and she stopped to answer it, hoping it was one of the guys calling to say he'd gotten a new phone and everything she was starting to think about their silence was just a false alarm.

“Miss Drew.”

The computerized voice had her stopped in her tracks. _Please let this not be some sort of strange ransom demand. Not that I wouldn't do whatever it took to get either of the boys back, but—_ “Yes?”

“Congratulations on passing the first test.”

Nancy blinked. “Wait—I was _supposed_ to reject your case?”

“If you were willing to take that case without knowing who was behind it, you would have disappointed me,” the voice told her. “Loyalty is important, but blind loyalty—”

“Makes me too easily used,” Nancy finished. “I made the mistake of trusting the wrong people before. I'm not inclined to do it again. I hope I've matured since then, even if you did lay something very tempting on the table, Oracle.”

The computerized laughter was unpleasant but not malicious. “Of course it was. It was meant to be. If you're still interested, we can discuss it further.”

“Not until I know more about you and what you want,” Nancy countered. “For starters, you can drop the computerized voice and we can talk for real.”

“You might be asking too much,” the voice warned.

“Actually, I'm not asking for enough,” Nancy said, because she wasn't. Names, face-to-face contacts, verification... All of that was something she should demand before getting involved in any of this. “And if we can't even talk without the computer, this can never happen. As much as I love mysteries and want to stop the people behind the kind of crime you've dangled in front of me, the risk of doing it for the wrong people or to further some agenda far worse than those crimes... It's too great. I can't do it.”

“That's good to know,” the computer voice said, and the call ended.

Nancy looked down at the phone. She couldn't call them back, and she didn't know that she would have. If she couldn't know who wanted to hire her and why, if she couldn't be sure she could trust them, she couldn't do this.

She pushed the button again. Time to head to Bayport.

* * *

Dick leaned against the wall not from the department's IT lab. He didn't want to be far from where he'd left the flash drive. Truth be told, he'd walked into that one a little too blind, unprepared for the change in personnel. All of Dick's previous interactions with the Blüdhaven police's technologists had told him that none of them actually cared to do their job. They'd blown off his requests, had outdated equipment but didn't seem to care, and he'd even caught them in several obvious lies about their knowledge of either technology or programming.

This one could still be lying, but the dynamic _had_ shifted, and if he wasn't mistaken, so had the equipment. The archaic desktop he'd seen the last time he was in that office had been upgraded with a new touchscreen monitor and judging from the tower—a lot more than that.

So the department not only had a new employee but also new gadgetry. Considering that the force was corrupt and didn't investigate much, it was strange.

Daniel Weston was as well. Dick got the sense the man wasn't being honest, though he couldn't pinpoint a specific lie anywhere.

He took out his phone, waiting for the connection of a secure line. “Hey, Babs. How's it going with lady red number two? We going to see a club start up any time soon?”

“Ha ha,” Barbara muttered, not impressed by the feeble joke. “It's too soon to tell on that front—you haven't even been gone that long.”

Dick nodded. The bust that had brought him and his partner back to headquarters had been right at the start of their shift, and he'd still be out there in the city if the same individual who dropped the drive hadn't smashed their squad car, too. He didn't know that the department had a spare for them to use—his partner had told him to deal with the drive while she handled that, and he truthfully didn't want any part of it, so he left that in her hands.

“Something's up with the tech department. New guy, new equipment. Both as of today, I think.”

“Oh?” Barbara fiddled with something on her end, and Dick knew he shouldn't be hearing any background sound—she was letting him on purpose, since she could have filtered out anything that would have given away her location and what she was doing if she wanted to. “You no longer have an excuse to ask me for help with your computer stuff, then.”

“Hey—”

“Please. Technologically challenged you are not. You grew up with some of the most advanced tech on the planet, and I know you made some of those requests just to irritate me.”

“More like to hear the sound of your voice, which I never tire of,” Dick corrected and then almost smacked himself in the head. When he'd started, it sounded like something fun and playful. When he finished—well, it came off more pathetic and possibly lovestruck. “So... You want to look into a few things for—”

“You know, when you said this wasn't a rookie hazing, I almost believed you,” Weston said from the doorway. He snorted, shaking his head. “I take it you were waiting out here the entire time to see how long it would take before I noticed? I'm not amused. This isn't funny. You can take this and go wherever it is you're really supposed to be right now.”

Dick frowned, lowering the phone. “Excuse me?”

Weston threw him the drive. He had decent arm, might have actually been an athlete before becoming a cop, since Dick figured the physical requirements weren't the same in the tech department, at least not where the last occupants were concerned. “Gigs worth of photos from stock image sites would have been bad enough, but not even taking the time to make sure they didn't have the logo on them? Sure. Real nice use of my time. If it was revenge against the last guy, you could have left me out of it. I don't need this crap right now.”

Dick shook his head. “I didn't put anything on that drive. I found it after we pried our suspect out of our dented hood. You're sure it's just photos from clip art sites? That's not... That makes no sense.”

“It does if the thing was a clumsy cover no one expected anyone to look past. Family photos,” Weston shook his head in frustration. “I did, more the fool me. Thanks for wasting my time.”

“Is it possible there was something hidden in any of the files? That they were somehow a cover for something else?”

Weston glared at him, arms folded over his chest. “You expect me to believe you don't know that there is an entire encrypted layer underneath those photos? What is it, anyway? Something you had Wayne Tech cook up because you're bored?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Dick said, almost reaching for the other man. “I don't know how I suddenly became the enemy, but all I did was give you evidence like I was supposed to. Ask my partner. She sent me down with it. I didn't set you up, and this is not Wayne Tech.”

Weston appraised him, and Dick thought he saw conflict in his eyes. Whatever set off that temper was warring with the rest of him, and in the end, he let out a breath. Whatever he might have said after that was cut of by the sound of someone else behind Dick.

“There you are, Rookie. Come on, we have to go. I don't know how you missed it, but it sounds like we have a damn mob war on our hands,” his partner called from the stairs. “Everyone's been called in—we have to try and contain this thing. Get your riot gear and get moving.”

“I'm on my way,” Dick promised her. He turned back to say something else to Weston, but he was already gone. Clenching the drive in his hand, he returned his phone to his ear.

“Babs? Did you—”

“Heard it all,” she said. “I'll have everything you need on your new friend later, when you drop off that drive—and Dick?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

* * *

Frank was going to kill him, Joe thought. First he'd managed to miss checking in with his brother, and now... Now he was right in the thick of a battle between two crime families, and judging from the sirens and gunfire, there was no way that Frank _didn't_ know what was going on here. He was impersonating a cop, after all, a cop in the IT department. He had to know all about it.

And if Joe survived this stupidity, then Frank would definitely kill him for sure.

“Well, kid, what you do you think? How's this for your third day, huh?” Slyleri asked, nudging him. Joe tried to force a smile for his new “friend.” He'd been put under the enforcer's tutelage after impressing the head of the family with a Network agent's help, and he knew it could be a lot worse. All he'd had was “potential.” He hadn't actually had to hurt or kill anyone yet, and that he wanted to hold onto for as long as he could.

Apparently, that was all of three days, since there was no getting out of a war without doing something. He didn't want to end up killing anyone, but it might be unavoidable under the circumstances. He'd done his best to get away from the main action—not like him, since he would rather be right in the thick of a fight, but that was when he had his brother backing him up and he was sure he could control things enough to keep from killing anyone. This wasn't like that—not at all. Everything had gone crazy within a few seconds, and most of the time, it was impossible to know where the shooting was coming from.

Joe forced Slyleri away from the door and back toward a table. Knocking it over, he crouched behind it, his mentor nodding with approval. “Is it always like this?”

“No,” Slyleri answered, shaking his big head. He adjusted his hold on his gun and focused on the door, waiting for the men pursuing them to come through it. When they did, they'd be dead. And now that Joe had basically trapped them in this room with no other way out, if they went out the way they'd come in, that was going to be their fate. Death. “It's all them guys dying. People know the numbers are down, they smell the blood in the water, and boom, there they are.”

Joe nodded. That was half the reason he was there, in Blüdhaven, pretending to be a low level thug who needed direction. He heard sirens again, hoping maybe that could end this. “Only now they got the cops involved.”

Slyleri snorted. “Cops was always involved. It's Blüdhaven. They're all corrupt. Every last one of them.”

 _Every one but my brother,_ Joe thought. He wasn't about to say it, though, and technically, Frank wasn't really a cop, but that didn't mean that everyone was corrupt. It didn't say much for Frank's safety in the middle of all those crooked bastards, but Joe figured Frank was a lot safer than he was at the moment. Bullets impacted the door and wall next to it, and one glance at the door told Joe it wouldn't hold much longer. The table wasn't going to last more than a few seconds after it.

Behind Joe and Slyleri, the wall exploded, and Joe dived down, trying to minimize any damage from the debris. He coughed when the dust from the construction materials and smoke reached him, hoping there wasn't any asbestos in that old wall.

“Since when do mobsters use contained explosions?” Joe asked, lifting his head to look at the damage. “Or wear strange costumes?”

The guy in the domino mask shrugged. “We can't all have perfect senses of fashion. You want to live or not?”

Slyleri fired at the vigilante, and Joe shook his head, knowing he was probably making a mistake and ruining everything only three days into it, but he also didn't feel like dying for no good reason. He'd live with failure if he had to. He reached up behind Slyleri while he was focused on the other man, knocking the mobster out.

“Nice to see you have some sense,” the guy in the costume said. “Your other friends—”

“Not friends,” Joe said, though he did stop to pick Slyleri up, “Let's go.”

* * *

Barbara tapped her fingers on her keyboard, trying to make up her mind. On the one hand, it pleased her that Drew had refused to work with her not knowing who she was. On the other, it created a whole mess of problems because she couldn't go around announcing to the world that she was Oracle or that she had once been Batgirl or was connected to any number of Justice League members and vigilantes. She could use one of them as a reference, she supposed, and Dick would eagerly offer to be that go-between if she'd let him.

Dick. Now that was another matter for concern. She knew full well that he was heading right into the mess of a gang war, and while it would have been dangerous enough for him sitting on the sidelines and waiting with the rest of the police to contain the situation, that was not what Dick Grayson did. It would never be what he did. Being a hero was too much a part of him, from his childhood as Robin to his current role as Nightwing. Dick couldn't give up what was in his blood—acrobatics and heroics.

He would have found a chance to slip away by now, switching to Nightwing and getting right in the middle of the firefight.

“Hey, O, got a minute?”

 _Speak of the devil,_ she thought, though she couldn't help being relieved to hear his voice. As she spoke, she called up a map of the area, building schematics, and a satellite feed. “For you? Always. Let me guess—you need an exit.”

“That is what I love about you,” he teased back. “You know everything.”

She located his signal, placing him on the map and switching the schematic to the right one. “If the stairs aren't an option—”

“Nope. Roof and all the fun places gone, too.”

“Laundry chute, four apartments to the left of your current location,” she told him. “Be careful—it was supposedly boarded up when the building was converted from a hotel into private apartments.”

“Don't worry,” he told her with his usual confidence. “I still fully intend to make a certain delivery in person. Nightwing out.”

She heard the comm click off, and she went back to her screens. Dick was not the only person who needed Oracle's help, and she still had a decision to make about what she was going to do with Drew. She knew the detective was already on her way out of the city. She hadn't chosen the airport, which was an interesting development, but not necessarily the most revealing of choices. If Drew chose to go after the case on her own, she would have wanted to fly, not drive, but Drew had rented a car as soon as she left the hotel. Cross-referencing the likely destinations and Drew's file, one city stood out: Bayport.

Barbara could wait, then. With friends and connections there, Drew wasn't going to rush off. She could do a little digging on Daniel Weston now.

Or she could keep watching Dick's signal, needing to be sure that he would get out of that mess alive. That, Barbara knew, was the hardest part of being Oracle. She could only sit back and watch as friends and loved ones took the risks, unable to do more than guide them, unable to protect the ones she cared about. Even with all the technology at her fingertips, she would never be there with them. She had to send others in her place.

That was why she had to rebuild her team, had to find others she could work with. She had too much here to deal with herself, and she'd always valued being able to turn things over to Dinah and knowing that she would handle it.

Now she was alone again—and she hated it.

* * *

“This is ridiculous! Everyone else got out of here already. I didn't even do anything. Just ask that weirdo in tights!” Joe yelled through the bars, yanking on them. He smacked his palm against them again, clearly frustrated.

“Not sure I want to know about any weirdos in tights,” Frank observed, stepping out of the shadows as he did. “There are some things that I just don't need to know. I mean, there's close and there's still something known as 'too much information.'”

Joe snorted, glaring at him from behind the bars. “Cute. Did they send the dork parade down to intimidate me? Because you're not all scary. I want out. I want my lawyer. I've got nothing to say to you. Any of you.”

Frank shook his head. “Dork parade? Really? That was the best you could come up with?”

Joe managed to wince, probably remembering that he shouldn't know anything about Frank's actual role in the police department and had just given himself away with that one. He looked over at the empty cell before turning back to Frank. Clearly his little brother thought he was an idiot. Frank wouldn't have come down here to talk to him unless he could guarantee they were alone, but Joe assumed otherwise.

“You hurt?”

Joe shook his head, though at the same time, he moved a hand to cover his side, and Frank almost rolled his eyes. His brother wasn't very good at lying, not to him, though there were times when he managed to do it because Frank was distracted or being stubborn or stupid. Right now, though, he was none of those things. Joe had been out of contact and then in the middle of a war. Like Frank was going to ignore any of that.

“You should see a doctor. I can get—”

“What are you doing?” Joe hissed through his teeth, shaking his head. “You're going to blow _both_ our covers, you idiot. What part of department full of crooked cops did you manage to forget? You think it's a coincidence that everyone that got arrested after that shootout is already free?”

“You're not,” Frank said, leaning against the bars in amusement. “Wonder why that is.”

Joe groaned. “Seriously? What did you do to separate me from the rest of them? You do know that's going to make them suspicious and they'll think I'm a traitor or a mole or—”

“Or a suspect in case in another state? You're being held for transfer—at least until your paperwork gets lost again, which I expect to happen any second now. The security feed will start up again soon, too, but if someone didn't miss check-ins, I wouldn't have to resort to any of this to talk to him.”

Joe swore, smacking the bars again after he did. “You have got to be kidding me. You are the most ridiculous overprotective idiot I've ever known.”

Frank kept his arms folded over his chest, keeping his voice low because he knew he'd make his point better with a whisper than a yell. “You missed checking in. That came closer to breaking my cover than any of the rest of this did. You could have been made. You could have died in that shootout. There would have been nothing I could do. I'm not going to apologize for anything.”

Joe sighed. “I hate that we're on opposite sides of this thing.”

“Me, too,” Frank told him. He checked his watch. “Security will be back online in about thirty seconds. I'd better go. You'll be out soon enough, but...”

“Be careful,” Joe finished. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I will. You do the same.”

Frank nodded, stepping back and out of sight of the cameras. No one should know he was down here, but he was cutting it closer than he'd like. He had wanted more time to talk to his brother, but if he'd disrupted the feed for any longer, someone would have noticed. This would have to be enough, for now, but they needed to end this thing fast.

He heard something and caught a glimpse of a shadow, but when he got closer, there was no sign of anyone. Frank frowned, waiting. If someone had heard him with Joe... If he had broken either of their covers, they could both end up dead. If anything happened to Joe, Frank would never forgive himself.

Nothing. He didn't think anyone was there. He must be more paranoid than usual.


	3. Making Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick takes the drive to Barbara. Joe tries to preserve his cover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a part of me that said this came too soon. There was another part that says it couldn't have been delayed much longer, not without making it ridiculous or out of character. So I went ahead with it.

* * *

“Delivery.”

“I'm pretty sure I didn't sign for anything or buzz you into the building,” Barbara said, turning back to look at Dick. Oracle's security was supposed to be air tight, but one thing years of working with Batman had taught her that nothing was truly secure. She couldn't wall herself up in a tower and think she would be safe forever. That wasn't how it worked.

Dick shrugged, the gesture somewhat ridiculous in his Nightwing costume. “I promised you that I would bring you something. You can pretend you lowered the defenses because you knew I was coming—if it makes you feel better.”

“I might,” she said, holding out a hand for the drive. Dick didn't pass it to her right away. She sat back in her chair and frowned. “What is it?”

“Did you dig up anything on this Weston guy?”

“I have his official file, which is a little sparse for my liking,” Barbara said, pulling it up on the monitor. “Here. Pretty cut and dry in most respects. Almost... tailor made for a job in Blüdhaven.”

Dick leaned over her shoulder, skimming the file as he did. “Hmm. Community college for an associate's degree in computer technology, a transfer to a larger school for a bachelor's in programming, got a job with the local police department... Typical. Innocuous, even.”

“Other than the sudden transfer to Blüdhaven and the fact that his official file managed to get by with this photo attached to it,” Barbara said, shifting to the image. The light had glared off Weston's glasses and obscured the face completely. His hair was dark, and that was as distinguishable as his picture got. “This wouldn't be tolerated anywhere, but in a police department post nine-eleven? Impossible.”

Dick leaned against the desk with a frown. “Did you manage to find any others of him anywhere? You know... Facebook, school records, anything like that?”

“I know some people aren't photogenic, but this guy has a real talent for bad pictures. He's either cut off, blurry, or at such a bad angle he's unrecognizable,” Barbara told him. “I'd say you need to keep an eye on him, but you already are, aren't you?”

Dick nodded. “He was strange this afternoon, with the drive, but if he meant to cover up what was on there, why tell me about it? I didn't know what to think of him. Then when I got back after the riot was averted, I found him arranging a meeting with one of the men I helped round up earlier.”

Barbara frowned. “I thought they were all gone within half-an-hour of being arrested.”

“All but one.” Dick shook his head. “If Weston's involved with the mob, I don't know why he'd give me the drive and tell me it was encrypted. He could tell me that there was nothing but those pictures on it and cover it up. I don't know why he'd let on he knew more. And something was definitely eating him—Wayne Tech.”

“What about Wayne Tech?” Barbara asked, not sure she'd followed Dick's brain with that little leap he'd just made.

“Remember, he asked if I had Wayne Tech cook it up because I was bored. He connected me back to Bruce. He knew.”

Barbara shrugged. “Though Gotham likes to act like it is its own world and Bruce does little to change that perception—he even encourages it—the truth is that it isn't. You were a big time celebrity here for a long time, even if you never meant to be. You're Bruce's son. Someone from the area should know it—why more people in Blüdhaven don't connect those dots is the more surprising thing.”

Dick nodded. He tapped his fingers on his arm, thinking. “I didn't get to hear most of the conversation, but it's strange that he was the same one I helped out of the building earlier. He actually knocked his companion out when the guy shot at me.”

Barbara rubbed her forehead. “I know Bruce likes to say there is no such thing as a coincidence, but sometimes they do happen. Blüdhaven is a city full of crime and corrupt cops. Two of them crossing paths is not as unusual as it seems. So Weston is the latest of many. It's unfortunate, but not surprising.”

“Yeah. I just wish I understood what was up with the drive,” Dick said. “I don't understand how that fits in with the rest of it.”

“You'll have to keep watching,” Barbara told him. “I will keep digging.”

Dick nodded. “Sure. So... tell me how it's going with your latest candidate.”

Barbara grimaced. “She wasn't willing to work with me without knowing who Oracle was. It's a good position, and I agree with it—I like her for it—but it creates a lot of problems for me. I can't just drop the computer voice and announce who I am.”

“You want someone to speak for you? Anyone who knows you would, but I am close and available for anything you might need.”

“I'll consider it. She's gone down to Bayport for now, but when she flies out, she'll be likely to return through Gotham. I've got time to make up my mind.”

Dick gave her a look, folding his arms over his chest. “Exactly how many candidates have you rejected in the last two months? And when will it stop, Babs? You find an excuse and let them walk away. Dinah left, and it hurts, and it hurts that you no longer have Helena or Zinda here, but you can't ignore what you were doing and how much it mattered, either. You need people. Don't become Bruce. He thinks he can push us all away to save us—to save himself—but it doesn't work. It never has.”

“Dick—”

“Show me a real reason she can't do this,” Dick insisted. “Maybe she doesn't have the vigilante or superhero background most of us do, but she's a detective. She has a reputation for solving difficult cases. She's had training. If she's a bad fit, there's not a reason for it on paper. She's got standing offers from plenty of the alphabet soup, so what is it that makes her so wrong? Her wanting to know Oracle? You said yourself that's a good thing. So... show me proof she's wrong for all this. Let me see the whole file. Prove me wrong.”

Barbara glared at him, pulling up a file and gesturing to it. He could make his own decision about Drew. That didn't mean she would agree with it.

* * *

Joe didn't know if he still had a cover or not, didn't know if Frank keeping him later at the precinct had ruined it, but he had to find out. Maybe he was done here, and he wouldn't actually mind leaving. Most of the time, he hated being forced off a case, but this wasn't like the rest of them. They were fresh off a case that almost went so wrong he just about lost his brother, and now the Network didn't even have them working as the partners that they were. He wouldn't have thought anything of taking on the mob or even corrupt cops if Frank was there to back him up.

Joe was alone. He knew he could handle plenty on his own, but he'd been in over his head once already. Unarmed, stuck right in the middle of a gunfight, forced to get rescued by a costumed vigilante? That was not how he wanted to handle his cases. He was better than that, but he didn't go around carrying explosives or even guns most of the time. He hadn't had a way out on his own.

He would have had a plan if he'd been working with Frank. Slyleri was no Frank.

Joe walked up to his tenement, pushing open the door. Since Frank had the better job, Joe assumed he had a better place, but he didn't know. He hadn't talked to Frank about anything that mattered. All he'd done was confirm that he was alive, which probably helped Frank but didn't do much other than soothe his brother's overprotective feathers a little.  
He climbed up the stairs, trudging up to the third floor and stopping at the landing. He went down the two doors to his apartment. He opened the door and frowned.

“There you are, kid. Was starting to get worried about you,” Slyleri said, rising from the one crap chair that Joe had. “You got out late.”

“Guess they thought I needed to be shipped off to Ohio,” Joe muttered. “Seems I did something back there the cops still want me for.”

“That so?”

Joe shrugged. “I been there a couple times, don't remember much of either of those trips, but I won't say I didn't do it. Ain't saying I did, either.”

Slyleri laughed, and Joe tried not to react to it. Not only was that accent bad enough to where it shouldn't even seem like a joke, but he didn't know how Slyleri would react to what Joe had done earlier. Did he know Joe had knocked him out? Was he here for revenge? About to denounce him as some kind of snitch?

“Gotta thank you,” Slyleri went on. “Most guys I know, they'd just have left me there. Not that I'm all that happy I woke up in jail, but you didn't leave me behind.”

“Well, you know, when that bit of the table hit you in the head,” Joe began, not sure if the other man would buy that as an explanation or not. “I kind of figured we were both dead, but then that costumed guy had broken down the wall. It seemed like a good way out. Until I got caught, that was.”

Slyleri nodded, and Joe thought maybe he had actually bought the story. If he had, Joe's cover was in tact, but did Joe actually dare trust that? He could be in real trouble if they were just setting him up. “So the way I figure it, I owe you one. I was going to teach you a few things before, but now I think I'm obligated to, don't you?”

“Um... sure.”

“Why don't we start with lesson number one?”

* * *

“This is interesting stuff,” Dick observed, scrolling through the file. He clicked on another page, expanding a picture and giving it an appraising look. Barbara ignored him, though he knew she wasn't just pretending to be absorbed in the decryption she was working on. A part of her was definitely ignoring him, angry about him daring to call her on her isolationism and paranoia—she had some good reasons for the one, and he couldn't blame her for them, but he also didn't like seeing her give up on life because of them. “I mean, in comparison to what we deal with on a daily basis, her cases are pretty tame, but it's not because she lacks skill. This would, I admit, be a whole other world for her, but she wouldn't be helpless, either.”

Barbara didn't comment. She kept her eyes on the lines of code, and Dick shook his head again. He knew she was just coming up with excuses at this point. Logically, she knew she needed a team and she knew the kinds of people she needed for it. Still, even with the qualified “applicants” she'd found, she'd found some reason why she couldn't work with any of them. Drew wasn't the first.

Dick was going to see to it that she was the last. Even if Nancy was wrong for what Barbara needed, he wasn't letting her get away with an excuse this time. She had to give this one a real chance.

“Hey, Babs?”

“Dick, I've already heard it, and I don't want to—”

“You said that your friend Nancy was heading to Bayport, right?”

That actually got him a look, for all of two seconds. “Yes, I did. Stop pestering me. She hasn't left yet, and these algorithms are complex. I need quiet. Don't interrupt me again.”

Dick couldn't help the smile that took over his face. “I just can't help wondering why she'd be headed there when the people she is most likely to visit aren't even there. Kind of suspicious, don't you think?”

Barbara stopped, taking off her glasses and wiping them on her shirt. “What are you talking about?” 

“Observe this picture, Oracle. Tell me what you see.”

Barbara replaced the glasses, not the slightest bit amused. In fact, Dick probably shouldn't attempt to draw this out any longer. “What is your point? It's Drew with a couple of other teenagers who happen to be boys.”

“Not just any boys,” Dick said, still smiling and knowing it was pissing Babs off, but he couldn't help it. “We're talking about the _Hardy_ Boys.” 

“What I do know is that if you drag this out for any longer than you already have, I will hurt you,” Barbara said, grabbing his wrist. Dick knew she could still do it—losing the use of her legs didn't mean Barbara had ever become weak. “Why are you acting like a fanboy all of a sudden? If it's just to annoy me, then you've succeeded, but that kind of victory—”

“I am _not_ a fanboy,” Dick objected. “Yes, I know who they are. I thought you did, too. Two brothers. Detectives from Bayport.”

“You're still talking about them with the kind of admiration I'd expect if—”

“Please. I was a Superman fanboy. Once. Long ago,” Dick said, getting a little defensive as he went on. He rolled his eyes. “It's not what you think. I know about the brothers and followed a few of their... um, exploits because I had vested interest in them.”

Barbara folded her arms over her chest. “Dick—”

“I keep telling you—it's not what you think. Bruce found them first. He used them as... a sort of case study thing once. It was when I was younger and the Justice League was still having issues with him having a kid for a sidekick. Bruce used the Hardys as an example to show that the idea wasn't without precedent. Sure, their father was only a private detective and they weren't facing supervillains, but it showed that it wasn't just men with deep-seated psychological issues that got their kids into detective work. The Hardys weren't that much younger than me, and they were solving cases of their own. In public. It was hard not to... appreciate that.”

She actually smiled then. “I can see that. Still, you seem to have a little bit of—”

“You see the dark haired one there?” Dick interrupted, refusing to let her call him a fanboy again. It wasn't like that. “The older brother? Frank?”

“Yes,” Barbara said, her reaction a mixture of annoyance and fading amusement. “What of him?”

“That, my dearest Oracle,” Dick added a flourish because he couldn't help it—it was what he did, part of growing up in the circus, “is the man I met as Daniel Weston.”


	4. Dangerous Drives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flash drive causes problems. Lots of them, and not just in the sense of a headache for Barbara as she breaks its encryption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Action remains the bane of my existence. I was also struggling with a plot, but this chapter would have been so much easier to write if the plot I finally found hadn't involved action. I struggled so much with Dick's scene... *sigh*
> 
> I made up the names of the crooked cops and mobsters. I don't remember them from the comics, and I don't own any Nightwing ones, so I am just going on what I remember. It's not like I'm not playing fast and loose with canon as it is, as I have also decided that Amy has already introduced Dick to the non-corrupt members of the police force. It fit the plot to do it that way.

* * *

“Frank Hardy is undercover as a cop in Blüdhaven,” Barbara repeated, taking a moment to clarify that. She had heard all of what Dick had said despite the program she was running on the flash drive and despite his annoying antics and refusal to leave the Drew business alone. “What about the brother?”

“He bares a resemblance to the guy I rescued and think Weston—Hardy—was talking to in the cell,” Dick said. “Interesting.”

“They have someone on both sides of this thing,” Barbara said, her mind still running through the possibilities. She didn't know if their strategy was good or bad. Dick had both sides, but his work was done through Nightwing, using his hours in a suit to pick up things on the street and stop crimes while he was doing it. No one knew he was playing both sides, and he wasn't directly involved in the mob. “It's risky.”

“And a little bit brilliant at the same time,” Dick said, making her roll her eyes. He leaned against the desk. “Are you thinking that's why Drew was here in Gotham? Because she knew they were in Blüdhaven and was concerned about the vigilante angle? Or somehow managed to connect Oracle to it? I think that's a reach, and certainly a disservice to your talents. Granted, I'm no you, but I can't find any trace of you online, and I have looked—just in case, you know.”

She smiled at him. “Just in case.”

He shrugged, that boyish charm almost impossible to ignore. She knew better than to think about that. He picked up her stuffed Batman doll and turned it over in his hands. “I could go speak to her, if you like. Find out what she knows.”

Barbara sighed. “I think I liked it better when you were interested in her because she was a redhead and not because of her connection to the Hardys.”

“Not another word about being a fanboy,” he almost snapped, and she couldn't help being amused by his reaction. She would have said more had his phone not rung just then. He took a step away from it as he answered it. “Grayson.”

Barbara turned her attention back to the program she was running. A few more steps, and she should have the drive unlocked. She had to admit, she was curious about it. The level of encryption she was dealing with here was ridiculous for some simple street thug.

“No, Amy, I told you. I gave it to IT,” Dick said, and Barbara frowned. “You said—who asked for the drive? Mahoney and—Damn. That's really not good news, is it?”

Barbara felt herself tense. She knew that name. Dick had given it to her not long ago, asking for a deeper background search than he'd been able to do. He was one of Blüdhaven's crookedest cops, and for him to be asking about the drive meant it had something to do with his other employers. Trouble was, he was pretty much open to anyone who had money. The other name might have told her more, who this drive actually belonged to and what it might contain.

“Well, if they keep bothering you, just tell them the truth. You gave it to me, and I gave it to IT. You don't know anything else about it. Go home. It's late. Your family must be worried about you.” Dick hung up and came over to Barbara's side. “How's it coming?”

“Almost done, but you might have to come back to find out what's on here.”

“Oh, come on, Babs. You're not really that mad at me that you'd refuse to let me see it,” Dick objected. “You know that's—”

“You just threw your case study under the bus,” Barbara told him. “You might not want to let your fanboy dreams die just yet.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, because you weren't like the original fangirl yourself, _Batgirl.”_

* * *

Frank pulled on his jacket and started out of the precinct. He'd gone ahead and worked past the typical shift, wanting to put distance between Joe's release and his departure. He wanted to keep his interactions with Joe to a minimum, at least in public. They didn't look so much alike that they were instantly recognizable as brothers, but they did share parents and some resemblance. The less they were seen together while they were undercover, the better, especially since the Network hadn't given them much time to prepare and the closest they got to changing their appearances was a set of fake glasses Frank rarely wore and the different styles of clothes they were wearing now.

He was just glad that the Network made the rest of the cover a little more in depth and believable, other than the absence of pictures. Maybe they'd assumed that Frank and Joe would do more to alter their appearance, and so they'd gone to great care not to use any pictures that might contradict them, but still, it was hard to feel comfortable with the layer of protection so thin.

He might as well be himself here for all the good his cover was likely to do.

“Weston.”

Frank turned, facing one of the plainclothesmen from the department. He didn't recognize him, but he knew that didn't mean much. He hadn't memorized every face on the roster, not yet. “Can I help you, Detective?”

“I hear they gave you a flash drive earlier. I want it. It's my case.”

Frank blinked. He didn't think he believed that. This guy rubbed him the wrong way. “I don't have it. Why would I? It's evidence. It should have been logged in and locked up.”

He wasn't about to mention that he'd copied the drive, all the encrypted files, and was planning on decrypting them later. That was something no one else needed to know. That part was safely in his pocket, but he wasn't going to admit to it.

“It was never logged in,” the detective said, taking hold of Frank's arm. “You have it.”

Frank stared at him. “Excuse me? Why would I take it? Go double check your logs. I don't know what you're talking about, but if you don't let me go right now, I'll file a harassment complaint.”

The other man let go, and Frank shook his head as he started walking again. He wasn't sure what the detective's exact connection to the drive was, but he could learn a lot more once he was at home with his laptop and looking at the data he'd gathered. He could even see about looking up the man's file and learning more about him, but for now, he needed to put distance between him and the precinct.

He went to the car the Network had given him, taking out the keys. He opened up the door and got behind the wheel, starting it up. He would have to check after he got back to his apartment to see if Joe had actually checked in this time. He should have, but if he didn't, then Frank would have to assume that his cover had gotten blown and try to fix things somehow.

Joe had better not blow off a check-in again.

Frank had gone about three blocks away from the parking lot when he noticed the lights in his rear view mirror. He was in the middle of a city, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but after his encounter earlier, he figured paranoia was warranted. He watched as the lights followed him through three turns, and he knew he was being followed.

He considered trying to lose them for about thirty seconds, but it didn't take long to swing his opinion toward not doing it. He didn't know Blüdhaven well enough, for one, and for another, he had a cover to maintain. He needed to act like he wasn't aware of what was going on. When the lights swung around in front of him, speeding up and leaving him behind, he tried to relax. Maybe he'd overreacted. Three turns was usually a good indicator, but it didn't have to mean he was being followed.

He turned into the lot next to his apartment building, driving up to the second level before parking his car. The first floor was always full, and he didn't think that all of those vehicles belonged to the building the lot was for, but no one would want to park on the streets around here anyway.

He got out of the car and started toward the door. His apartment was at the opposite end of the hall, as far away from the door to the lot as possible, but he didn't need it to be closer, especially since he wasn't planning on staying long.

He was almost to the door when he heard someone behind him.

* * *

Joe rubbed his shoulder, thinking he should be glad that he was on Slyleri's good side. He'd hate to think about what a lesson might be like if he was on the wrong side of the enforcer. He was lucky. His cover was intact, but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt. Slyleri packed one hell of a punch, and Joe was still feeling it now, hours after the fact.

He used to think that he was good at fighting, but he'd had a few unpleasant things to learn at Slyleri's hands. The guy was all about toughening Joe up to face the next bit, almost enough to make Joe think the man was punishing him instead.

He leaned against the wall, taking a breath. Today had been long enough, and he was already sore and bruised, but he didn't think Slyleri was ready to quit.

“What's with the long face, kid?” Slyleri asked. “You're doing pretty well so far.”

Joe forced a smile. “Just wouldn't have expected someone who got hit in the head earlier to be so... tough. I... I'm tired and sore, but you just seem to keep on trucking.”

Slyleri laughed. “We don't have the luxury of resting around. That's not the life we lead. Movies and television, they make the mob into a joke. They make us into lazy slobs or idiots, and it's not like that at all. We all have to work, and we got to be smart about it, especially now. It's not like the days when all it took was a beating here and there to make people see your way. You have to be a lot smarter than that.”

“That lesson number two? Or are we up to three now?” Joe asked. He grinned, though he didn't really feel it. Playing at being nothing more than a fighter was harder than he'd thought. He'd always said Frank was the brains of their operation and he was the brawn, but he didn't feel much like brawn right now—and he would like to be doing a lot more investigating. “Sorry. Lost track.”

Slyleri let out a belly laugh this time, grinning back like a fool. “You remind me of my own boy. He would have said the same thing, only I'd been giving him lessons since he was a baby.”

Joe frowned, a suspicion overtaking him. “Your kid... He... He's dead, isn't he?”

Slyleri looked at him, and that was answer enough.

* * *

Nancy was almost to the Hardy's house when her phone rang. She ignored it, deciding that she would rather not try and answer until she was parked again. She pulled up in front of the darkened house and frowned as she turned off the engine. She should have called ahead—again—and seen if she got a hold of anyone before she drove all the way here. Not that it was too much of a problem. She could always get a hotel room for a night and start over in the morning.

She did want to make contact with at least one of Frank and Joe's friends even if she didn't see any of the Hardys while she was here.

She sighed, about ready to leave when the phone rang a second time. She reached over and picked it up, accepting the call without looking at the screen. She was hoping for Frank or Joe to be on the other end of the line. That would be a relief.

“Miss Drew.”

“I thought I made it clear that we weren't going to be able to work together unless you were willing to drop the voice,” Nancy said. She didn't like the timing of the call. It was unsettling, to say the least, sitting in front of a dark house with a computerized voice in her ear.

“You did,” the computer voice agreed, and then it stopped, the rest coming out in the clear tones of another woman. “I think we should talk further—that is, if you are still willing.”

Nancy looked up at the house. “I'm not in Gotham anymore.”

“I know,” Oracle said. “I'm aware you're in Bayport. In fact, there is something I think you can do for me while you're there.”

“Like what?”

* * *

Dick had to convince Barbara to move her operations to Blüdhaven. He knew she wouldn't, she'd say that Gotham was a better base, but she could coordinate what she did from anywhere, and he'd much rather she did it here, since then he wouldn't have to travel as far to see her. He did miss that about being in Gotham—seeing her—but then again, he hadn't been in Gotham very much toward the end of his days as Robin. He'd spent more time with the Titans then. Now he was in Blüdhaven, and the river separated them all too often. He couldn't get up there as often as he'd like, not with his schedule.

If he could get her to move, though, he wouldn't have to travel as far when he was needed here, and he wouldn't have to worry that he wouldn't be here in time.

He had gotten to the precinct in time to see Mahoney approaching Hardy. That should have been the end of it, but Mahoney didn't seem to like whatever answer Hardy had given him. He let Hardy walk away, immediately making a call.

Dick didn't like the looks of that, so he waited, making sure Hardy got into his car before firing off his grappling hook. He swung to another building, trying to keep pace with Hardy as he drove. The car wasn't hard to track, one of few decent looking ones in the city—obviously belonging to a newcomer—and he easily followed it through the streets.

Trouble was, he wasn't the only one who did. Dick had figured on it, but he was still hoping he'd be wrong. He hadn't meant to cause Hardy problems when he told Amy to say the drive had been given to IT. That was just meant to buy time—he would have had it back to the evidence locker as soon as Babs was done with it—but Mahoney clearly wasn't willing to let it rest there. Dick might have been the target if he'd still been in town, and he still might be. Mahoney would be smart to cover both bases—going after Hardy _and_ after Dick, since he must have been told that Hardy had given the drive back.

He grimaced. Maybe he should be watching over Amy instead. Mahoney could have sent someone after her, too.

He saw the car following Hardy speed up and go around the corner. He swung around in time to see it go into the parking lot for the apartment complex next to it. Dick had a feeling that was where Hardy was staying while he was in Blüdhaven.

Amy would have to wait. He'd have to hope that she was safe enough until they learned Hardy didn't have the drive. Dick swung himself over to the parking lot, landing on the second level. He'd seen lights on that floor before his swing, and he had to hope they were the ones he wanted.

He landed just in time to see four men in dark clothes about to rush Hardy. At least two of them were armed. Dick didn't have to call out a warning; though, Hardy heard them before he could, turning around to face them.

“If you're after money, I have a grand total of ten dollars in my wallet. You can have it, though,” Hardy said, holding up his hands in surrender as he pretended he was going to cooperate. Dick didn't miss him slipping into a balanced stance, ready for an attack. He had to smile as he decided on the best way of crashing the party.

“We ain't after your wallet, idiot.”

Hardy grimaced. “Well, I should warn you, my last girlfriend was very disappointed, if you catch my drift there, and really, it would be worse with you because you're so not my type.”

Dick laughed, flipping himself over to the two on the outer edge, allowing the distraction his laughter had caused to be his advantage as he knocked one of them to the ground. That one hit the cement hard, and Dick figured he was out for the count. He withdrew his eskrima and used one to block the swipe the other made with his knife.

It didn't take long for the others to decide that Dick was the bigger threat—he was armed, after all, and in costume—and they joined their friend in fighting him, apparently putting all their faith in strength of numbers.

 _Great,_ Dick thought. _This should be fun._


	5. Threats and Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy finds out what Oracle's request is. Joe learns more about his mentor. Frank and Nightwing deal with the ambush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I noticed very guiltily that it had been five days since I last updated this one. I'm sorry. I knew it got pushed back with work and then the whole migraine thing, but I didn't realize it was as bad as that. In my defense, the action was hard to try and puzzle out while headaching and I keep feeling like Frank is out of character, so I'm struggling a bit more with this one.
> 
> That, and I think it might be easier to wrap up some of the other stories whereas this one is just barely rolling forward now.

* * *

“Do you have any idea what Frank and Joe Hardy were working on last?”

Nancy felt herself tense at the words. Was this really what Oracle wanted from her? A line on her friends? They had to be kidding. Frank and Joe were too important to her to tell strangers about their work, and she didn't care what this Oracle was offering or if she seemed to be on the side of good, despite the secrecy.

“Let me get this straight,” Nancy said, shifting the phone in her hand as she folded her arms over her chest. “You want me to give you information on what my friends were doing? Just like that?”

Oracle's voice, still lacking the computerized edge, held some sympathy when she spoke. “I know it sounds like—”

“Like I'm being asked to spy on and betray my friends? Because yes, that's what it does seem like, and no, I'm not going to do it. Even if I did know—and I don't; we don't share details of all our cases like that—I wouldn't tell you.”

Oracle sighed. “I understand your loyalty, and I respect it. However, your friends may be in trouble here, and I need to know what they were working on last to confirm my suspicions. If they are under threat, I would think it better that you know and can assist them, don't you?”

Nancy shook her head. “I don't know. It still sounds like a trap to me.”

“Trust isn't something that's given. It is earned,” Oracle agreed. She almost sounded amused there at the end. “Though I know some people more willing to give than they are to wait for people to earn it. I can help you if you help me, but that does require a certain level of trust. I'm almost certain that your friends are working in my territory, and they could be in real danger.”

Nancy sighed, leaning against the house. “It's not that I don't want to do what I can for them, but I don't like the idea of handing out information to a stranger, either. I'm sorry, Oracle. As intriguing as our interactions are, I really can't do what you're asking of me. And if I find out, in a minute, that this was another test... I think I'll hang up on you.”

Oracle laughed. “I wouldn't blame you. I was similarly inclined when I realized that I was being tested by an 'unknown' benefactor. He even put my life at risk when he did, so I can understand anger as well as the annoyance you're feeling now. I just can't lay everything on the line yet. My first partner went over a year without meeting me in person.”

“I've been accused of being terminally nosy,” Nancy said. “I'm not sure that would work for me. Besides, I've worked a few too many cases where the people who hired me or my friends—mainly Frank and Joe, but there were others, too—were responsible for the crimes that they hired me to stop. I'm a little leery of jumping in blind.”

“Also reasonable. I just have the same mountains of reasons of my own for holding back and maintaining the secrecy and privacy that I do.”

Nancy nodded. She could understand that. “Maybe we can find a good compromise. Something that doesn't violate your security or involve me betraying my friends.”

“I am not lying about the potential threat to them.”

Nancy grimaced. “It's Frank and Joe. I know you're not. I'm just not sure I can—no, I know I can't risk telling you about their case even if I could figure out what they're involved in. They don't always leave a trail.”

“So I noticed. There's not much of one electronically, so you would have been looking for the paper one,” Oracle told her. “However, as we need something else to form this... truce, we'll need a different sort of request.”

“Which is?”

“There's a woman named Grazia Slyleri. She lives about twenty miles north of Bayport. I need you to find out if she's still in contact with her ex-husband or not.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because she could potentially compromise Joe's cover.”

* * *

“Was he one of the ones... the ones you said caused the blood in the water?” Joe asked, curious in spite of himself. Asking too much about Slyleri's son was like asking to get pounded for being too open, too emotional. Joe was supposed to be some tough kid off the streets, someone who was going to make it big by breaking legs and scaring people, not one who cared about everyone enough to ask about the guy's dead kid.

Slyleri shook his head. “Nah, you'd still see me drowning in the bottle if he was. I know she thought that was all I did. All I was good for. Just a pathetic, spineless little drunk.”

Joe looked at him. “She?”

“My ex. Grazia. She... She left me after we lost our boy,” Slyleri said, shaking his head. Joe thought that still hurt. The guy might even still be in love with her. The loss of a child, though, that could break up plenty of families. He'd seen it happen a few times in his work, and he hated it. That was almost as bad as the initial crime was.

“I'm sorry.” Joe sat down, watching Slyleri and telling himself this was still progressing the case. Slyleri was trusted. The higher ups liked him. So if Slyleri liked Joe or even if Joe just had a bit more on him, that would help if it came down to it.

He hoped it didn't. He actually kind of _liked_ Slyleri.

“Wasn't your fault. She said it was mine, that this life had done it to him, but Joey, he was a good kid. Way too good.”

Joe jerked without meaning to. He didn't care for the name Joey himself, but he'd heard it plenty of times as a nickname for his own. It was kind of strange to think of this guy's kid having the same name as him—not that Slyleri knew that, because he had a cover and went by something else here, but it was still odd.

“Did you teach him?”

“Like I'm teaching you, you mean?” Slyleri nodded. “Yeah, a bit. Just enough to defend himself. See, idea was, Joey got all his mom's smarts so he'd go to college and do better than me. But until he got there, he'd have to fight. That's just how things was. So I taught him.”

“Only it wasn't enough?”

Slyleri shook his head. “No, it wasn't. He... He wasn't a fighter at heart. Good kid. Too good for the likes of me. Maybe if I'd taught him more... but I didn't. He's gone. All gone.”

Joe could see why the guy might have turned into a mopey drunk and why someone might have lost patience with him for that. Still, that didn't make it right. He could hear genuine grief in Slyleri's voice. The guy was a good father. He'd been trying to do his best by his son. Probably like more than half of Blüdhaven. He'd just never gotten the chance to make things right.

“I'm here,” Joe told him. “You can teach me.”

* * *

“Oracle to Nightwing.”

Barbara frowned at the delay that came in getting Dick on the line. Normally, he was back immediately, sometimes with a flirty comment, sometimes a goofy joke, and sometimes a harried comment. Right now, getting nothing, that was more worrisome than it should have been. She knew that it was easy to let her mind assume the worst with the kind of work they did. Everyone was at risk of being hurt or killed on any given night. Dick was even fool enough to chase that risk in his day job.

“Nightwing?”

“Here, O, sorry,” he said, sounding out of breath. “Had a few extra dance partners jump my card, and I'm still fending off their advances.”

She snorted. “Cute.”

“I thought it was a decent one,” he told her, and she could picture the grin on his face right now. “Did you happen to find out what is behind all this extra affection I'm getting here? Because I'm almost certain they're after what you've got.”

“I've unlocked the files,” she agreed. “And you'll want to see them for yourself. The scope of this thing is a little... concerning, to say the least.”

“You're still not going to tell me?” Dick asked, feigning hurt. “But O, darling O, wonderful O, you know that I respect you more than any other—excuse me for a second—”

She waited, hearing some sounds from the fight filtering in through the comms. They didn't last long, and she didn't detect any injuries in among them, at least not to the one that mattered.

“Ah, that's better. Now where was I?”

“Shoveling a line that was about to bury yourself pretty deep,” Barbara told him, smiling as she did. “I tried to get Drew to tell me what the Hardys might be up to here in Blüdhaven, but she wasn't willing to trade secrets, so I sent her off to check on the possibility of the younger Hardy's cover being compromised. The man you helped him save earlier has an ex-wife that lives near Bayport.”

“That's an unfortunate coincidence,” Dick agreed. “Any word yet?”

“Still a wait and see, but I thought you might want to know that your friend also had a visit to her house tonight.”

Dick swore. “How bad was it?”

“Don't worry. I sent a few of the club members there after you picked your path. Good as you are, you can't be everywhere at once, and she knew what might be coming whereas your new friend does not. She's safe. So is her family.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled, knowing that it wasn't really necessary, but Dick did care about his partner and her family, and he did not want anything to happen to them. Barbara had it within her power to try and stop it, and this time she had. Next time—well, next time might not be as easy, but she'd still try. “Better wrap up what you're doing. You don't have much time left of the night to make a trip here and back to get some sleep before your next shift.”

“Oh, O, don't you think maybe you want me to sleep over this time? I mean—”

“Oracle out,” she said, interrupting him before he could get very far with that one.

* * *

Joe would be jealous, Frank thought, if he knew that Frank's life had just been saved by one of the vigilantes they'd spoken of before. Frank didn't feel all that special, not when he was used to fighting for himself or his brother, and he didn't think he needed to be rescued. That was never the best feeling, even when it should have been a relief.

The click behind him told him the fight was far from over for him, even if the guy in blue and black had the others on him.

“Give me the drive.”

Frank swallowed. “For one, I don't have it. For two... it's a little dumb to come after me and ask for it after threatening me earlier, isn't it? I know who you are, I know what you want, and I know that you're—”

“You can do this the easy way, or I can search your corpse. Trust me, kid, there won't be anyone looking for your killer.”

“The guy in the suit over there says differently,” Frank told him, _and even if he wasn't here, Joe would hunt you until the end of his days. He'd never give up on the person he thought had killed me._ “And so do I.”

The move was risky, since the gun could have gone off right in his back, taking out vital organs or severing his spine, but he made it anyway, sidestepping and twisting around to grab the gun, forcing it to fire into the ceiling as he elbowed the other man in the stomach, getting him to lose his grip on the gun. Knocking it away with his foot, Frank faced Mahoney with a cold glare.

“You...”

“What, just because I like computers doesn't make me helpless,” Frank told him before getting in a solid right hook that wanted to break his hand even as Mahoney went down. Trouble was, as soon as he turned around, he was facing four more men with guns, none of them the ones that he'd been up against before. Whatever was on that drive must have been pretty damn important.

He wouldn't be surprised if that other car meant more reinforcements, since he was almost certain the second group of men had come in separately. He wasn't sure why they were all so fixated on him, but Mahoney didn't care about killing him, and he had to figure the same went for all of the men here and any more that might show up. Damn it.

He had to put some distance between him and those guys, and while a part of him did consider going for the gun he'd kicked away, he didn't. That way was too exposed. On the other hand, there was a car to the right that he could use to block their fire and maybe allow him to flank them.

What the hell. He didn't have a better plan, that was for sure.

* * *

Dick had expected the first group to turn on him. He really had. They must have figured they could deal with Hardy later and he would run as soon as Dick had gotten the others off of him. That was what plenty of people did when Dick or one of his friends showed up.

Of course, they had no idea they'd just attacked one of the Hardy brothers and that Frank wasn't one to run. Dick had seen him looking for his opportunity, for a moment to strike that would have been effective, but then the others had joined in on the fun, four more plus the one that had tried to sneak up on Hardy, and Dick had to finish his first set of dance partners to move on to the second.

Hardy wasn't bad, but he wasn't armed, either, putting him at a slight disadvantage to the men attacking him. He took cover first, dodging behind a car that took more than its fair share of bullets before Dick slammed one of the gunmen to the ground and knocked another's gun from his hand. By then, Hardy had managed to circle around and disarm another of them.

“I think that is the last—”

“Another car. Two lanes up and four cars over,” Hardy said, eyes going toward the vehicle. “They pulled in while the fighting was still going on. Most people wouldn't still be sitting there watching. They'd have left.”

“They could have offered to help,” Dick suggested, and Hardy snorted. Yeah, it was unlikely, but it wasn't impossible. “You want to stick around and say hello to them?”

Hardy gave him a look. “Now you're sounding like my brother again.”

“Again?” Dick asked. “Pretty sure this is the first time we've met.”

Hardy snorted. “Sure it is. And you have no idea why they came after me. You just _happened_ to be in the area. I'll buy that one—about the same time as I accept that pigs can fly and the world is balanced on top of four elephants.”

“Hey, balancing the world on elephants would be cool.”

Hardy nodded. “Sure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to grab my meager possessions and get out of this place.”

Dick frowned. “I didn't think running was your style.”

“Killing isn't, either, but that guy's a cop,” Hardy said, pointing to Mahoney. “He won't be behind bars for long—probably less than that crowd of mobsters that was arrested today—and so if I really like the idea of living past the night, I have to leave.”

“Well...” Dick began. “There might be another option.”


	6. Rumors and Reassurance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rescues continue, as do investigations and tests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is way overdue. First there was a bit of writer's block on this story, then work stuff, more work stuff, and now I am sick. Still, I've been plugging away at this whenever I could, and I finally got all of it done today. How good it is, I don't know. Work has left me without any sense of good left in the universe, and then I'm sick and that clouds judgment.
> 
> Oh, and Tim is still Robin. I'm not sure if Damian will make any sort of appearance here, but as I mostly set this at the beginning of Dick's tenure as Nightwing, I went with Tim as Robin. Not, of course, that I know how to write Tim.

* * *

“The other option?” Frank asked, opening the door to the stairwell. He took a step inside, not sure if he would be followed or not. The other car was still there, and no one had gotten out of it, so turning his back on it was a risk. He could say the same about the vigilante, but Frank had already acknowledged that he was in no place to be casting stones there. “What, dressing up in my pajamas and running around town at night in a mask?”

“I'll have you know this is a kevlar weave, not pajamas.”

The affront in the voice was almost too much. Frank snorted, unable to contain the laughter he knew had no place here. He was not that kind of person, though there were times that Joe would say something just as ridiculous and get him laughing like an idiot despite their latest kidnapping or the fact that one of them was wounded. Again.

“Ah, I saw that,” the guy in the mask said, wagging a finger at Frank. “That was a smile. So, you willing to hear me out about the possibilities, or are you just going to make fun of my clothes again?”

“Does it require being seen in public with you?” Frank asked as he crossed the small room to the interior door, heading into the apartment complex. “Because I think I'd have to pass. You have worse fashion sense than my brother, but people have still gotten the wrong idea about us, and I'd like to leave this mess with some part of my dignity intact.”

“You know—you could be more grateful. I did just save your life.”

“Hmm.”

“And normally, I don't make a big deal out of that sort of thing, but all and all, I figured you'd be different. You have the reputation of the logical, reasonable one, the one whose cool head kept it all together during the crisis and got the job done.”

Frank stopped, looking back at his new _friend._ He hadn't want to believe it, but he was sure of it now. The guy knew who he was. He wasn't talking to Daniel Weston, faceless IT guy. He was talking to Frank Hardy, one of the so-called legendary Hardy boys. “Logic, reason... all good ways to become cynical.”

“Trust me. I know that all too well.”

Frank gave him a look. That was a little hard to believe, but he didn't know this guy well. The humor might have been all part of his act, going along with the suit and the mask. “I don't need the escort. This is a big city, and I'm sure if you're looking to play hero, there are others who need your help somewhere else.”

“You're the one who got attacked. You sure you don't want help? Because from where I'm standing, you're still in a bad position.”

“I doubt I'm the only one.” Frank met his eyes—or what passed for them in the mask. “I think you already know this since you came after me, but there were other cops involved. Why aren't you bothering Rohrbach? She has a family. She might need help a whole lot more than I do.”

“I'm aware of the threat to her, and I'm monitoring the situation. In fact—O? You still there?”

Frank left him looking like he was talking to himself, though there could have been someone on the other end of the line. He didn't know. He also wasn't sure he cared. He went to his apartment, frowning as he pushed the door open. He had locked it before he left, even if there was nothing in it worth taking—with one exception, his laptop.

Great, so now he'd been robbed, too.

He opened the door the rest of the way and looked inside, stopping in the doorway as he saw someone in the shadows. “I thought the welcome party was outside.”

The Network agent moved ever so slightly into the light. “I've never been one to throw parties.”

* * *

The information that Oracle had access to and could send Nancy in an instant was almost disturbing. She didn't know how the other woman had managed the remote hack on her phone, but Nancy had practically the entire life story of Grazia Slyleri before she hung up with Oracle. The file was detailed enough to where the drive was too short to allow the phone to read the whole thing to her before she got to her destination.

She skimmed it over after she parked, trying to decide how best to initiate this conversation. She didn't have a badge or a reason to be asking questions, and she needed one, fast. She could try being direct, but that was not the best idea she'd ever had—asking someone about her dead son and failed marriage would be difficult enough without being obnoxiously blunt about it. Lying would be worse, in many ways, especially if the lie was a poor one.

She opened her car door, stepping out as she did. She couldn't ask for help, not from the guys who were still out of contact and not from Oracle, since this was still a test on both their parts—she wanted to see if Oracle was right about the threat to the boys, and Oracle wanted to see that Nancy could do what she needed to do in the field.

She just wished she had a better cover or a credible set of fake credentials, but she would make do with what she had, little as it was.

She was about to knock on the door when it opened a crack. The homeowner had been waiting for her to get close. Good thing she hadn't waited in the car for long. “Mrs. Slyleri?”

The woman behind the door eyed Nancy with suspicion, not opening it any more than the crack she needed to peer out from it. That kind of paranoia should have led the woman to avoid opening it at all, but she was there anyway. “I don't know you.”

“I know you don't,” Nancy told her. “And I want to assure you that I'm not here to sell you anything. I was hoping that you might tell me a bit about your son.”

“My son? What does that have to do with anything? He's nothing to you. He never knew you. I'd know if he did—he had a thing for girls with red hair.”

Nancy didn't think of herself as a redhead most times, but others liked to consider her that, so she made the best of it, and this could be the start she needed if she was going to get information from the other woman. “It hasn't always been red.”

“You sure about that? You look kind of familiar. Yeah... I know you. You were in the papers. With those boys. Front page Bayport news.”

Nancy forced herself not to wince, though at least she had confirmation on whether or not Mrs. Slyleri knew about the Hardys. She definitely did. Now Nancy just had to find a way to see if the other woman would have told her ex-husband about them.

* * *

“Are you sure you're okay, Oracle?”

Barbara grimaced. She should have known that someone as smart as Tim would ask that, and not because she gave anything away in her voice or words—she knew she hadn't—but in the request itself. She wasn't supposed to ask Batman's partner to go on his own to Blüdhaven. Both Bruce and Dick would have had a problem with that—Dick wouldn't want to admit he needed help and couldn't be in two places at once and Bruce—well, Bruce was Bruce. He was Batman, Gotham was his city, and Robin was his partner. He was rather clear on where Robin belonged, and she wouldn't be surprised if Tim's time with the Titans started being an issue for him as it had been when Dick was a part of that team.

“I'm fine.”

Tim snorted on the other end of the line. “You still haven't found anyone to take over for Black Canary and Huntress, have you?”

She nodded in concession to his deduction, though he couldn't see it. “No, I haven't, but that just makes me short-staffed. I'm fine. And I don't need anyone hovering—Dick has that more than covered.”

“I wouldn't hover,” Tim told her. “I just... You asked me to do this, and that's not a simple thing, not with the whole unresolved Nightwing and Batman and Blüdhaven thing.”

“They are getting along better now,” Barbara reminded him. Tim had not seen the worst of that split—she was one of few that had, on both sides—maybe all three if you counted Alfred, which she sometimes did, knowing how it upset the older man to have both his charges fighting like they were and how disappointed he was they wouldn't reconcile to where Dick would move back into the manor. “And I wouldn't ask if I had anyone else local enough, but I don't. Local meant you.”

“Would you have asked him?”

“If Superman was off-planet, maybe.”

Tim laughed. “Well, I'm glad I was here to ask. I've been gone a lot myself. And with some of the other things going on, I wasn't sure I'd be able to help.”

“I appreciate it, Robin. Especially since there aren't many good cops in Blüdhaven and it would be a shame to lose any of the ones that are left.”

“She's safe, Oracle. Nothing will happen to her while I'm here,” Tim promised. “Robin out.”

Barbara sat back in her chair, smiling. At least that part had gone right. She wasn't sure what to think of the rest of things—she knew that Drew was with Slyleri and that Dick was still with one of the Hardys—or so she'd assumed from the lack of contact, but she knew she had a ticking time bomb on her hands with the information on that drive, and she needed to figure out what they were going to do about it.

If she still had a team, it would be simple. She'd already have people in motion. Right now, though, she didn't have a team, didn't have transportation to move that team, and she was going to have to see what favors had to be called in instead.

“Are you still there, O?”

Dick. She smiled. “Always, Former Boy Wonder. What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to check and see if we had a status on Rohrbach. My new friend here seems to think she's under more threat than he is, and while I tried to tell him that she was fine, I don't think he believed me. Considering that he just walked off and left me here, I'm going to say he definitely didn't believe me. He doesn't seem to get that he's in trouble.”

“Now who does that remind me of?” Barbara teased, getting a slight groan from him, though it was true of more than one member of their group, even her at times. “Robin just reported in, and Rohrbach is safe.”

“You called Robin? Does you know who know?”

“I'm sure he does, but he hasn't said anything, so I'm assuming tacit approval via silence,” Barbara answered. “You can stick with your new friend. I'll let you know if anything changes with Rohrbach or Robin. And remember, you and I need to go over what I found on that drive.”

“Must be important,” Dick agreed. “They were willing—still are—I assume—to kill him to get it back. You're sure Robin's got the other end handled? It's not that I doubt him, but I don't want to see him _or_ anyone else hurt, and if they're willing to kill, the costume's not going to be the kind of deterrent it is in Gotham. I would know.”

“He's fine. They're fine. If something changes, I'll tell you. You just handle your end and get back here as soon as you can.”

“Ha,” Dick said. “I knew you missed me. So do I need to bring special overnight supplies? I have the most amazing pajamas you'll ever see as well as this special lotion that—”

“I've seen your pajamas. I'm not impressed. And you won't need them.”

“Ooh, is that a threat or a promise?”

She rolled her eyes. “Quit goofing off, Nightwing. Oracle out.”

* * *

Joe had felt bad about using people before to pursue cases, but most times those people were girls he charmed into helping him and Frank, and most of the time, they weren't really at risk or in danger, though sometimes they'd been on the wrong end. He'd had a princess defy her family for him once, and he knew that cost her plenty, but somehow, this thing with Slyleri seemed worse. Maybe because it was still a lie. The guy still thought that Joe was just some street kid, had no idea he was Joe's way into the mob and just a tool used for that entry.

Not that Joe felt like he was—that was what made all of this so difficult. The guy was decent. The Network had managed to get him in close to one of the less hardened, more likeable criminals, and Joe didn't hate the guy or want to take him down. He liked him, and he didn't mind learning from him. He felt bad for the guy, since it was clear Slyleri hadn't thought he had any way out of the mob but he'd tried—and failed—to make one for his son.

“I think you might want to turn in for the night,” Joe suggested, looking at Slyleri's weary frame. The other man had been lagging for a while, mind somewhere else in all his lessons, and Joe wouldn't have been surprised if that meant he was thinking about his son. “You look tired.”

Slyleri nodded. “Am tired. So tired of all of it.”

That did not sound good. “Um...”

“You know, I miss her. Can't believe I do, not after what she said to me, but I do. Sometimes I think I'll call her up and tell her—dream about fixing all of it, but it can't be fixed, can it?”

Joe shook his head. Had Slyleri managed to get drunk while he wasn't looking? Maybe that glass wasn't water like he'd thought, though he hadn't smelled anything while they sparred. It was possible the guy just got really nostalgic and maudlin when he was tired. And Joe _had_ brought up his son, so that had to be messing with him.

“If you could get out, if you could start over, would you do it?” Joe asked, curious but also thinking that this might be something he could use, a way to get more than just entry level training.

Slyleri shook his head. “Too old for that. Besides, even if the cops weren't crooked and I could go to them and say I wanted a deal and protection, I don't know anything worth knowing. Not that I would go telling anyone. I'm not a snitch.”

“'Course not.”

“Though I heard one of those Gotham bosses was moving in down here. Big one. One of the kinds who keeps Batman busy.”

Joe watched him. “You sure about that?”

Slyleri just laughed. “Don't let it get to you, kid. Those kinds of rumors happen all the time.”

* * *

Dick had to blame Babs for his distraction, allowing Hardy to get away from him and down the hall to the apartment. He had to figure it would serve the other man right if he walked smack into a bullet waiting for him there, but at the same time, Dick didn't want him dead. He just wished that people were a little less stubborn about accepting help sometimes.

He made his way to the end of the hall, reassured that Barbara had made the right call and Tim would handle everything that needed to be handled with Amy and her family. He was a good kid, arguably a better Robin than Dick was, even if the boy was still learning, and he would just get better as he grew up. That was— _if_ he grew up. Jason hadn't, and that still weighed on Dick _and_ Bruce.

“I thought the welcome party was outside,” Hardy said, and Dick rushed the last few steps, not sure what he would find when he got to the other man's side.

“I've never been one to throw parties.”

“That does not surprise me at all,” Hardy said, and Dick got the feeling that this new player was someone he knew. Maybe even the man who'd sent him and his brother here on this assignment, though if it was official, Babs hadn't found any record of it—not that she'd said, anyway. “And I suppose this shouldn't, either. Are you here to shut it down or to hand out more information that you neglected to mention before or that was somehow—”

“Need to know?” Dick finished, and Hardy looked back at him with a frown. “Yeah, I'm not lost, not likely to become that way, and your friend over there has me more curious than before, Weston.”

Hardy sized him up, like he was trying to decide why Dick might stick to that name instead of the real one. “He's not a friend. Neither are you, but that clearly doesn't matter tonight.”

“Hey, I could be a very good friend,” Dick said. “Not so sure about the other guy. He's got covert government agency without oversight written all over him. I know the type. Trust me. I don't just deal with the costumed variety of criminal madmen.”

“I'd say that you _are_ the costumed variety of criminal madmen, but I swear that's not even me talking,” Hardy muttered. “He'd laugh. Say separation was getting to me.”

“Your brother?” Dick asked, but the stranger in the room didn't let Hardy confirm that.

“I see our conversation will have to wait for another time,” the agent said, crossing the room and addressing Hardy, ignoring Dick as he spoke. “I can't say I think much of your choice of companion, regardless of the city you're in. You seem to continue to make poor decisions in that respect despite your reported intelligence.”

Hardy glared at him, hand balling into a fist. Interesting, Dick thought. This guy didn't like the younger Hardy, did he? Dick couldn't help wondering why that was—the boys were legends together, not apart. “I don't care what you think.”

“You should,” the agent said, weighting the words with a threat. He pushed past Dick to get to the door, dismissing him completely. Dick just rolled his eyes. He was used to that attitude by now, dismissed by too many officials and criminals alike.

“Ignore him,” Dick advised, seeing that Hardy was still tense. “He's wrong.”

Hardy just shook his head, but before either of them got a chance to continue that argument, a gunshot rang out in the hall.


	7. Clues and Confrontations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank and Dick try to help the Network agent. Nancy confronts Mrs. Slyleri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is shorter than the previous chapters have been, but the end just wanted to be there, and the rest felt like unnecessary filler or things to include later, so I did it this way.
> 
> And I know it's way overdue and should be longer because of that, but I am just going to have to be content with actually managing some kind of update after so long.

* * *

“I'd ask if that was what I thought it was, but I have enough experience with that sound to know it is,” the guy in the mask said, and Frank had to agree—it wasn't like he didn't know the way gunfire sounded. He'd recognized the shot as well, and while he wasn't able to pin down the exact type of gun that had fired it like some people did, he knew that shot wasn't good. If more had followed, he'd felt better of it, strange as that sounded, because that would have meant that the gunman missed. This didn't sound like a miss.

Frank nodded. “Me, too.”

The vigilante moved first, throwing some kind of smoke grenade into the hall before he moved into it. Frank followed him to where the Network agent had fallen, hand over a wound in his side. He knelt down beside him, his mind racing through his first aid courses and biology lessons. Damn, this was bad. Laurence wasn't likely to make it, and admittedly, Frank wasn't all that sorry about it.

“Should have known.”

“Well, the fact that you came instead of him suggests you were expendable,” Frank said, though if he was trying to be funny, he wasn't. He wasn't wrong, either. If the Gray Man hadn't come himself, he had reasons. Frank wasn't sure if he'd set this agent up to die or if it was just self-preservation or even some strange trap for a rogue or double agent that this idiot had walked right into.

Laurence laughed, bitterness creeping into the weak sound. “Score one for the genius brother.”

“You were here for a reason,” Frank reminded him, fighting against his own reaction. He and Joe had a tense enough relationship with their own handler, but this particular field agent made that dynamic look like the best of friends. Frank swore Laurence would have eliminated Joe in a heartbeat if he was able to, and while he had a little more respect for Frank's skills, it wasn't much. He hated working with them, and whenever the Network assigned him to them in some futile “character building” exercise, it never went well. “What was it?”

“We need to get him out of here,” the vigilante said. “You can question him later.”

Laurence snorted. “Didn't know masks... made stupid... but should have.”

“And maybe if you didn't insult everyone you worked with, you'd have made it a lot further in life,” Frank told him. He shook his head. “We don't have time for this, Laurence. We all know that. Even you do. I can hear it in your voice. Tell me why you were here. What were you supposed to tell me? Spit it out while you still can.”

Laurence grabbed hold of him, yanking him closer, and Frank almost jerked himself free, instinct getting the better of him. “Block...”

Frank winced. If Laurence had put his intel in some brick or block and expected Frank to find it, it would be a nightmare. He didn't know Blüdhaven well enough for that, and Laurence wouldn't have made it easy. It wasn't going to be here in this apartment building, not at the precinct, not anywhere that made sense or related to the case. “Don't do this. I don't have time for a scavenger hunt. Neither do you. If this is your last act, make it count, damn it.”

“...buster... Roll... land... Des... des...”

“None of that makes sense,” Frank hissed at him, though even in his frustration, he knew it wasn't Laurence's fault. The man was dying, after all.

“Red... Horn... Foam... foams... No... Floor... Is...”

Frank frowned, not sure what any of that meant, but he didn't have the chance to ask about as the agent exhaled one last time and stilled, his hand falling off Frank's arm. Laurence was gone. Maybe if they'd had a less antagonistic relationship, Frank could have gotten the information he needed from him, but he hadn't. He didn't know what any of that meant.

The vigilante grabbed his arm. “He's gone. And we need to go. Now.”

“Wait. Help me search him. If he had something, anything, we need it before we go,” Frank told him, and the man in the mask nodded, quickly setting to work on the other end of Laurence's body. Frank closed the agent's eyes and forced himself to check his pockets.

“Anything on your end?”

Frank glanced at the vigilante before shaking his head, not sure if he trusted him to be telling the truth or not. “No. He's not even carrying a wallet.”

A shot cut through the smoke, followed by several more, and they ducked down, the masked man pushing Frank toward the nearest door. “I'd say that's our cue to leave.”

* * *

“So what brings some kind of world famous girl detective to my front door?” Mrs. Slyleri asked, leaning against the door frame and folding her arms over her chest. She seemed dangerous, and Nancy wondered just how much of the mob connection was her ex-husband's and how much was hers. The file had suggested she left her husband over the death of their son, but that didn't mean that Grazia hadn't been a willing participant before that tragedy.

Nancy could see the value of masks right about now. She would rather have a disguise or a cover story—not that one would have worked with the woman recognizing her from the papers—to try and ask these questions. If Grazia was talking to her ex-husband, she would tell him about this visit, and Joe would be in trouble for sure.

 _Think, Drew._ She had to find a quick solution, a good way to handle it, and maybe Oracle had some kind of contingency plan in place already—if she was as good with technology as she seemed to be, then she could get a warning to Joe or get him out of there as soon as Nancy was finished, which would be a relief, since Nancy knew her attempts to reach Joe weren't going to work. He wasn't answering his own phone, and she had no idea what name he was undercover with or how to reach him with it.

“It's about your ex-husband,” Nancy said, watching the other woman's reaction carefully. Maybe they were still bitter, her and her ex, still fighting, which would reduce Joe's risk tenfold, but if Grazia had any kind of sympathy toward him, then it could be that she'd warn him, blowing Joe's cover.

“It always is,” Grazia said, shaking her head. “What's he done this time? Did he get drunk again or is this about someone he beat up? Can't imagine why anyone would care. Those ones are always worse than he is, but then again... Right and wrong don't mean much in Blüdhaven, do they?”

Not from what Nancy had heard, no. “Wouldn't you know? Aren't you the first one he contacts when he's in trouble?”

Grazia laughed. “No. Not anymore. Don't know who he picked for that, but it ain't me. _Ti scureggia il cervello._ He hasn't dared come to me since the divorce. He doesn't call, doesn't write, doesn't show up drunk on my doorstep. Not a word in years.”

Nancy eyed the other woman, a sudden suspicion rising in her mind, and as soon as she had it, she was sure of it. “You're lying. You're doing it to protect him. You still love him. He was the father of your son. You had a life together, and that didn't die when your son did. This is—this is how he got you out of Blüdhaven and away from the mob. He let you divorce him and blame everything on him, but this is his way of protecting you.”

Grazia's expression darkened. “Well, now, I guess we know why you're a world famous detective, now don't we?”

* * *

“So, O, does you know who still have a safehouse established here in Blüdhaven?” Dick asked, landing on the rooftop and letting go of his reluctant passenger. Hardy walked away, taking the flight across the city better than some others had when Dick dragged them along for a ride against their wishes. No puking, no cursing, no terror of heights. He did still look pissed and like he needed time to recover his dignity, but that wasn't too bad all things considered.

“He closed up and sold off the one we both knew about, and while I strongly suspect he wouldn't leave himself without a hiding place in Blüdhaven, I haven't found it yet. He must have buried it in more shell companies than usual,” Barbara answered. “I take it that means you have a guest you need a room for?”

“Weston's not going to be able to go into work tomorrow,” Dick agreed. He looked over at Hardy again, trying to decide just what to make of him. Professional, yes, but was the lack of reaction to that man's death a good or bad thing? “A corrupt cop attacked him, and someone else died right in front of his apartment. I'm betting he'll be the subject of a city wide manhunt for that one, since they need him silenced about whatever was on that drive.”

“Don't say it. Not one word.”

“Your place is safe, right?” Dick asked, ignoring her warning. “One of the safest places in the world, and I should know since I'm constantly testing your security for you. Besides, you'd be able to know if Weston is lying about what he found on the drive.”

“You know, I can hear what you're saying. You abducting me off the roof after I mistakenly followed you up there didn't make me deaf,” Hardy said, and Dick grinned at him. He did like the guy, and honestly, he wished the circumstances were different, so that they were working this case together without the mask. Dick Grayson and the Hardy boys, now that would have been fun. “No one said you had to take me anywhere. I can manage on my own.”

“I'm not discounting your ability to fight, as I saw firsthand you're not bad at that, but Bludhaven's corruption goes deep, and you won't find anywhere in this town where you can hide. Not even with one of your fellow cops. Most of them are worse than the scum they're supposed to protect the city from,” Dick told him. “At this point, getting you out of the city is the only way of keeping you alive.”

“I never once asked for your help,” Hardy reminded him. “Thanks anyway, but I'll manage from here. I don't need protection, and I'm not leaving the city.”

“Not leaving your brother, you mean,” Dick countered, watching Hardy's reaction. “Joe is neck deep in the mob, and I get why you wouldn't want to leave him behind, Frank, but your cover is completely blown and you can't salvage anything. You'll be arrested the instant you're seen, and you won't last in any jail cell. That's the nature of Blüdhaven. That much I think you already know.”

“Yes, Grayson, I am well aware of the nature of Blüdhaven,” Hardy said, arms folded over his chest and the rest of his body poised for a confrontation. “And since both of us are aware of who the other is, I think we can drop the pretenses and the false names. Or masks, in your case.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Italian phrase I used is supposed to be an idiom for "you're talking crazy." I got it from the internet, so it's probably inaccurate.


	8. Small Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout from the Network agent's death is quick and threatens everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am trying to catch up on things, even though it is a very slow process. It's harder than I would like it to be to get these chapters out. I keep thinking it will get easier, but so far it hasn't.

* * *

“Speaking of rumors,” Slyleri said, picking up the remote and pressing the button on it. “Time to see what lies they've cooked up for us today.”

Joe shook his head, amused as Slyleri put the television onto the local news channel. He would have thought that whatever alcohol the man had gotten his hands on was enough to keep him down and out, since he claimed to be so tired. Joe had expected to catch him passing out by now, but Slyleri was still on his feet.

“This just in—we have breaking news. A manhunt has just been ordered after the discovery of a body in a local apartment building. The name of the victim has not yet been released, but sources say his death is tied to an occupant in the same building, a recent transfer to the Blüdhaven police department—”

“See, kid?” Slyleri asked, his voice drowning out the sound of the news anchor. “It's like I told you. There isn't a cop in this city that isn't corrupt.”

Joe stared at the screen, feeling numb. He should be sick, and a part of him was. He couldn't help it. The television mocked him, made a liar of his own convictions and assertions, but at the same time, Joe knew that it was lying. It had to be, because that was wrong. That would never happen. It wasn't real. Someone had made it up.

“Every last one of them,” Slyleri repeated. “There's not a place in this town you can go, not a one that could be trusted. All of them are dirtier than the blackest pits of hell.”

Joe tried to force a smile for that description, but he couldn't manage it. He was still watching the screen scroll by in disbelief. This was not happening. It could not be happening.

But it was.

* * *

“No one said anything about dropping masks.”

Frank rolled his eyes. He'd been in this position before, though usually it was with obviously guilty criminals who were trying to deny their involvement in crime. He didn't want to think about how many times he'd been standing in front of someone he and Joe caught redhanded that tried to lie their way out of it, especially not the ones who had pretended to be friends. “You can try and convince me I'm wrong, I suppose. It'll waste valuable time, but I can't stop you from making the attempt. I didn't bother contradicting you, though I could have. I could have leveraged everything against the fact that the cover I was given should have been deep enough to fool anyone. They're usually pretty thorough. Disgustingly so, since I've tried to break past a few of them myself with poor results. I've given you the professional courtesy of not denying things and drawing it out. You could do the same.”

Grayson folded his arms over his chest, studying him. “Your identity wasn't that hard to find for anyone who had a real picture of you to compare your face to, not that I hadn't seen it in papers before. Like as not, you've got a reputation and international renown. The fact that they thought you'd be unrecognizable is a little hard to take.”

“It's the glasses,” Frank told him, since he'd actually argued that point with the Network and lost. He would have preferred to do more to alter his appearance—dyes, fake scars or tattoos, just about anything besides a single pair of glasses and a wardrobe change. “They work for Superman, don't they? So why not some insignificant little IT guy?”

“You're not little,” Grayson muttered, gesturing to the difference in their heights. “And—what do you mean it works for Superman?”

“You want that shouted off the rooftops? Because I could,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Joe and I have had a running bet about it since we were kids. He still refuses to pay me since we've got no conclusive proof, but I have enough evidence to support the theory. I can also extrapolate a few things from what I know about you. Like who Batman is and—”

“Okay, clearly you are too dangerous to be left out the streets,” Grayson muttered, and Frank snorted just before the other man grabbed hold of him and jumped off the roof. He knew better than to struggle and get them both killed, but he wanted to fight, instinct telling him not to let himself be taken so easily and not like this. Who knew where Grayson was dragging him off to, and what was he supposed to do while he was there? Get locked up forever for the crime of knowing a few superhero identities?

And how was he supposed to get Joe out of this mess if he couldn't get free of Grayson? Frank didn't want to abandon his brother, but he didn't know how he was going to get free of the vigilante or his associates.

“I can file charges for kidnapping, you know. I'd even do them with the correct name on the affidavit,” Frank called to him, wondering why he got stuck with this role when Joe would have loved to be in his position. They were basically flying, and Joe had always wanted to do that—from jumping off things when they were kids to pushing for a pilot's license as soon as they were old enough to bungee jumping. “You might consider that when we land.”

Grayson laughed. “Who said anything about landing?”

“You can't keep me up here forever. There's a limit to your supply of grappling hooks and your physical stamina. I'm not really sure I want to do the math on that right now, but sooner or later, you have to stop dragging us across the city.”

“True,” Grayson said. “Since we need to make a trip across the river.”

“Wait, what?”

* * *

“All right,” Grazia said, her voice as tight with tension as her body was. “You're right. He got me out. He got me away from all of what he couldn't keep our boy from, got me far away. Bastardo. All those years I wanted him to leave, to get us out of that place and have our boy grow up free from that poison... He never did. Never could. Then when my baby dies, he finds a way. Too little, too late.”

“Only you do still love him, and if he was able to leave as well, it's not too late. Maybe you can't have another child, maybe you wouldn't choose to, but you still have each other and you could adopt or foster children if you wanted to. There is still time for a second chance,” Nancy told her, and the other woman's eyes narrowed at her. “And that is what you're still hoping for, isn't it?”

Grazia folded her arms over her chest. “What do you want from me? My ex has done many things, and he's far from perfect, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna rat him out and hand him over to you. He's not what you think. Not a killer, not for all the bad stuff he's done. In a city full of scum, he's a damned prince.”

“I never said he wasn't,” Nancy said. She wasn't implying anything about Slyleri. Truthfully, she knew next to nothing about the man, since most of the file she'd been given dealt with Grazia and their son, not the man himself. She was mildly relieved to hear Grazia's defense of her ex because that meant that the threat to Joe was less than she'd assumed when Oracle led her to Grazia, but that still didn't make him safe. If he was with Slyleri, then he was with the mob, and that meant that he was in trouble.

Frank probably was, too, though Nancy didn't know if he was with Joe or not. They rarely separated, but that wasn't a guarantee—it just meant that saving Joe might or might not save Frank. In some sense, yes, it was almost the same thing because Frank would be devastated if he lost his brother, but at the same time, it wasn't.

“Why are you here?”

“I needed to know what you knew about your husband's activities, if anything,” Nancy admitted. The other woman glared at her, and she held up a hand. “There is a chance that we may have a way to end the mob threat in Blüdhaven—”

“And you want my husband's help?” Grazia finished. “Well, that is interesting. Exactly what do you thin he can help with? He's a low level flunky, or did you miss that part? He doesn't know anything. If he did, I would have made sure he used it a long time ago to protect our son.”

“It might not be about what he knows now but what he could get access to and who he could help with that access,” Nancy explained. What Slyleri knew could be of aid to Joe, though he could still be a threat, too, and that was what Nancy still had to figure out—just how much Slyleri could be trusted.

“Why don't you just ask him?”

* * *

“I come bearing guests.”

Though she had heard him come in and the sensors had detected him long before he got close enough for her to do that, Barbara swung the chair around to look at Dick, frowning. “Normally you come bearing gifts, and even then, no one ever said you were welcome.”

He laughed, bounding over to her chair and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before she reached up to push him away. She shouldn't have let him in, but she hadn't wanted to injure the civilian she knew he was bringing with him whether or not he should. True, she'd heard Hardy call Dick by his real name, which meant that one—his fanboy admiration of the other detective wasn't entirely misplaced—and two—he already knew too much about who they really were. He had guessed not only Dick's identity but hinted at knowing Clark and Bruce's as well.

They could either discredit him—a difficult but not impossible task—or contact one of their friends with telepathy to make it so that he forgot, but either path was risky. Then again, given her role in the superhero community and other places, she wasn't entirely sure she liked the idea of Dick bringing Hardy here.

“I am not sure you thought this through,” she began, catching Dick's arm. He needed to listen to her. They had to make other arrangements and fast.

“I didn't have a lot of options,” Dick told her, shaking his head. “It's not about the safehouses, though I have the distinct impression our guest would not stay in one of them for long. He's... a bit more trouble than I would have expected.”

“I should say I resent that, especially as no one really asked if I wanted any part of this kidnapping idea,” Hardy muttered. “I am capable of defending myself, and I didn't need your protection. In fact, I'm pretty sure I refused it more than once.”

“Actually, you need it more than you know,” Barbara told him. She moved back to the computer, tapping a screen and pulling up the Blüdhaven newsfeed. “This is already all over the city. There are orders for you to be shot on sight.”

“Laurence would love that,” Hardy muttered. “Unbelievable. And yet... not, all at the same time.”

“You mean you would have expected the highly classified agency known as the Network to have intervened, even though they hide themselves behind other government agencies and officially do not exist?” Barbara asked, watching Hardy's reaction. “Even with their ability to act as though they belong to any of a number of legitimate government agencies, they would risk exposing themselves if they were to intervene now. Their operation has clearly been botched, they've lost an agent, and it's likely the manhunt for you is going to expose your brother.”

Hardy's jaw tightened. The brother was a clear sore spot for him, a vulnerability that could be exploited if necessary. “If you're going to argue that I should stay here and that's the best course of action to keep my brother safe—”

“It is, actually. There is an advantage to the mask,” Dick told him. “There's a lot I can do freely because of it—and a lot that doesn't come back on the people I care about because I do.”

“And if it were your brother who was threatened, there's not a damn thing that would make you stay here, and you know it,” Hardy countered. “And don't forget that this is your fault—”

“Excuse me?”

“Don't act like I'm an idiot, Grayson. The moment that guy confronted you about the drive, what did you do? Tell them you gave it to IT and had no idea what happened to it, right? They came after me, and whatever the hell Laurence would have told me after he got over himself is gone along with my cover and possibly a lot more. I should be pissed as hell at you, and I kind of am. I'm also not stupid enough to think that you didn't bring that drive right here—the computers are a dead giveaway, along with the Oracle designation, which says a lot on its own.”

Dick fidgeted, uncomfortable. Barbara eyed Hardy, not sure what she thought of him right now. “What exactly does it say?”

“You do realize you're sort of an urban myth in the digital world, right? You're credited with impossible hacks and programs that give diehard hackers nightmares—or wet dreams, depends on how they're wired—and yet there's no real trace of you online. Anywhere,” Hardy said. He shrugged. “I can't claim I'm close to your league, but I've seen a few things that told me there was more to the myth than overactive imaginations and nerd rage.”

“Should I ask you for your 'hacker' name and list of digital exploits?”

Hardy laughed. “What, you didn't already find my online footprints and track them back to me? Not that I have a 'hacker' name or any real reputation in that arena. I prefer to stay unnoticed, and that was, actually, the way my 'employers' preferred it as well.”

Barbara smiled at him. “There is something to be said for being a digital ghost.”

“Hey, are you trying to steal my girl here?” Dick asked, leaning over the back of her chair. “Because that sounded a lot like flirting there and I have to say—”

“I'm not your girl,” Barbara told him with a swat, trying to back him off.

“Sure you are. You just haven't realized it yet,” Dick insisted, grinning at her, and she went through that mental list of all the reasons why that was a very bad idea as she tried not to let that smile or the butterflies in her stomach affect her.

“Ignore him. His ego gets the better of him when the mask is on,” Barbara told Hardy. “It's obnoxious, but I think it helps with his cover, so we give him a slight pass on it.”

Hardy shrugged. “That doesn't matter to me. What does matter is what's on that disk and how we're going to get my brother out of there without getting him killed.”


End file.
